Top 5 Reasons to BUY or NOT buy the Lenovo Ideapad 320!

LaptopMedia.com Highlights Top 5 Reasons to BUY or NOT buy the Lenovo Ideapad 320!

From: Silvia Genova 16 March 2018 / 03:38 | 0

This time we are going to focus on an ultra-budget entry-level notebook suitable for business and educational purposes – the Lenovo Ideapad 320. If you are intrigued to find out its top 5 pros and cons, then keep on reading.

You can check all available Lenovo Ideapad 320 configurations here: http://laptopmedia.com/series/lenovo-ideapad-320-15abr-15/

1 reason to buy Lenovo Ideapad 320

1. Cheaper than its competitors

The Lenovo Ideapad 320 is ideal for those of you who are on a budget – the configurations have a starting price of $267. Of course, if you have some extra cash to spare, you can go for alternatives that are definitely worth the upgrade such as Acer Aspire 5, Ideapad 520 and Ideapad 320s.

4 reasons NOT to buy Lenovo Ideapad 320

1. Unsatisfactory build quality

If you opt for Core i3 configurations and above, the build quality of the model certainly doesn’t correspond to the price tag. Unfortunately, the main material used for the construction is plastic. When you put pressure on the lid, there is a visible deformation and ripples appear on the LCD screen, if pressed in the center. Furthermore, the hinge doesn’t manage to hold the lid firmly in place so when you open the notebook you can feel a slight creak. Moving on to the interior, it uses plastic too which is not an optimal choice of material as it doesn’t create a feeling of rigidity.

2. Poor display quality

The display quality is not an impressive peculiarity of this notebook either. If you are considering the absolute entry-level configurations, this issue can be easily ignored but in case you are planning to purchase the Core i3 and above configurations, we suggest spending slightly more on a notebook with better image quality. Quite frankly, the TN panel of the Lenovo Ideapad 320 has more cons than pros – a maximum brightness of just 189 nits, rather low contrast ratio – 317:1, and limited sRGB coverage (49%) don’t really make the visual experience that appealing. Therefore, we suggest installing our custom profiles thanks to which the image quality will be undoubtedly improved in certain aspects.

3. Unreliable cooling system

The cooling design turned out to be not so efficient. During our stress tests, the laptop’s Core i5-7200U didn’t manage to reach its maximum potential and it was running quite warm – around 70 °C. Furthermore, when we turned on the graphics test the GPU got extremely hot – around 90 °C. In addition, you can feel the heat coming from inside near the left side and center of the keyboard as well as around the touchpad because of the position of the chips and the heat pipes.

4. Short battery life

We can turn a blind eye to the poor battery life but only for the entry-level configurations. However, the 30Wh just won’t be sufficient for a higher-end option as it offers subpar runtimes. For instance, the Lenovo Ideapad 320 scored just 247 minutes in the web browsing test so we wouldn’t recommend staying away from a power source for too long.

The best competitors

If you are willing to spend some extra cash, have a look at Acer Aspire 5, Ideapad 520 and Ideapad 320s as they are definitely better alternatives to the Lenovo Ideapad 320.

Follow this link to read the detailed review.